How To Keep a Gratitude Journal

Every coach develops their own toolkit that they share with their clients. In this article, I’m pulling out one of my favourite tools to share with you. I love it because it works.

Using a gratitude journal, you’ll increase your awareness of beauty, the people in your life, and your daily successes that are otherwise quickly forgotten.

How Do I Keep a Gratitude Journal?

Happily, keeping a journal is easy. There is one step:

Every day, write down at least 5 things you are grateful for. 

5 specific things that happened in your life on that day. 

How long do the gratitude entries need to be? Not long at all. See the examples below.

On a dark day…

When I was having some really dark days shortly after my mom died my list would look something like this.

Today, I’m grateful for:

1. My cat who purrs when I pet her

2. The beauty of the frost patterns on the window

3. My ability to breathe without difficulty

4. Having food to eat today, and

5. Having a bed with soft sheets that I can snuggle into at the end of the day and close my eyes.

On a clear day…

Of course, we all wish for better days than that and so aim to have 5 great things in your journal each day; 5 ways that your life became richer. On a great day, your list might look something more like this.

Today, I’m grateful for:

1. Meeting with two new prospective clients and helping them to choose to move forward with my coaching packages. Woohoo!

2. Receiving an email from one of my NLP students who just landed their first client.

3. Eating an amazing dinner with my family, prepared by my hubby.

4. Doing an hour of yoga because I made the time and space for my health.

5. My cat who purrs when I pet him. (because some things never change)

What does keeping a gratitude journal do?

Energetically, it re-aligns your thinking away from lack and trouble to focus on what is going right.

It is an energetic axiom that what you focus on grows. So we want to be focusing on health, wealth, and happiness.

The gratitude journal literally pulls your focus off of what is wrong and puts it solidly on what is right and beautiful.

A warning: the day you are most likely to skip this practice is the day where everything goes wrong. This is also the most important day to hunker down and search for something, anything, to be grateful for.

This is a sacred practice. Many of my clients buy themselves the most beautiful journal they can find and record their gratitude entries in it each day. Over time it becomes a record of how amazing your life really is. 

When combined with goal-setting, the gratitude journal takes on a clarity and focus that is startling. When we are working toward a powerful goal, our gratitude journal keeps us accountable and we can see our progress in its pages.

I will often have my coaching clients share their gratitude journal with me to hold them accountable for staying focused on what is right and good in their lives. I am continually impressed by the powerful changes I hear about from my clients when they really start to feel into gratitude.

Do it daily for two weeks and notice what starts to shift.

If you want more support in shifting your focus to what is right about your life, contact us today. As I see it, your results matter. A lot.

Vanessa Long

Vanessa Long is creator of the Seasons of Success and author of Discovering Your Passionate Purpose. Focused on providing straight-forward, no b.s. solutions, strategies, and support to move you from where you are to where you yearn to be. It’s time to tap into your purpose and build a life that expresses all of who you were designed to be.